"There is a woman going up and down the country lecturing, and may be in London city at this moment, and she proudly cries out that there is no God, and she takes out her watch and says, 'Now, if there be a God, I give him five minutes to strike me dead,' and she coolly stands watching the hand of her watch dial, and because she is not struck dead by the time she stipulates, she cries out that there is no God; and working men run after this woman, and pay for listening to this ginger-beer blasphemy, and the ravings of a half-drunken woman." [Footnote 32: _Northern Ensign_, May 17.] Mr Bradlaugh offered Dr Parker the use of the columns of the _National Reformer_ in which to verify his statement, but, needless to say, Dr Parker did not avail himself of this offer. * * * * * In 1878 the fable was told by "H. Clewarth, Esq.," at the Mile End Assembly Hall, of Mrs Besant, and by a revivalist preacher named E. B. Telford of Mrs Harriet Law. Mr Telford also indulged in the effective first person, even mentioning the detail that the watch was a gold one.[33] [Footnote 33: This person was still telling this story in December 1883.] * * * * * Now we come to a still further development. In June 1879, Mr Bradlaugh was lecturing in Huddersfield. He spoke three times on the Sunday, and at the conclusion of his afternoon discourse a man got up, and with the utmost assurance pretended to my father's face that he had heard him defy God to strike him dead in the Philosophical Hall of Huddersfield itself. A Christian gentleman, understood to be the editor of the local _Examiner_, rose and warmly repudiated any complicity in this audacious falsehood. Almost at the same time the story, with variations, was repeated by a preacher of Aberdeen named Marr. He gave as his authority a certain unknown person, John Kinch, who, it was asserted, had been actually present when Mr Bradlaugh thus defied God. I have been able to note here only recorded instances of the telling of this story, but they will serve to show the astounding vitality of a slander, even when it is one so monstrously absurd as this. It will be seen how people of all kinds lent themselves to its circulation, and how reluctant they were to apologise when convicted of error. I am far from asserting that they all uttered the calumny knowing it to be a calumny; that, in the case of such a man as the Rev. Basil Wilberforce, would be unthinkable; but I do say that they did not take reasonable pains to satisfy themselves of the truth of a story which, on the face of it, was in the highest degree improbable and absurd. * * * * *